Jeremy Fisher loves talking about his bike, which is fortunate for him since that’s usually what people like talking to him about; and justifiably so. In an age where seeing singer-songwriters starting a career is about as common as boybands ending theirs, having an interesting marketing tool can make or break a career.

Fisher, born in Hamilton and now residing in Vancouver, used to ride from gig to gig on his bicycle because he couldn’t afford another means of transportation. He once rode across South Dakota, about 500 miles, in a week to get to his next show.

When he signed a major label deal with Sony, which since merged with BMG, he says using the bike story was a successful way to get his name known. He just wishes he had though of that earlier in his career.

“It would have been effective, but I was too stupid to use it as a good marketing angle,” he tells andPOP. “I felt like a goon calling people asking for shows. I generally wouldn?t tell them I was riding my bike which is a stupid thing to do because I found once I started doing that, they’d give me a gig just because I was doing that, whether they liked my music or not.”

While the bike has its ups, there are obviously the downs.

“On the east coast when we’d wake up in October, our water bottles would be frozen and we’d have to wait until noon until we were able to get a drink of water,” he says. He bundled himself up, with just his eyes being exposed to the frigid weather. “You get hot riding a bike in cold weather. It makes you keep riding.”

When he was an artist without a record deal, he booked his own shows. He spent about three months planning three weeks of dates, and continued repeating that cycle.

Now, while promoting his debut major label album, “Let it Shine,” it’s much more “immediate,” Fisher says.

“I can say at any point, I want to go out and tour here. I can set a goal to do a whole bunch of promo and touring and afford to actually go out and do it and have the support systems in place and people working getting all the interviews together and making it all work smoothly.”

He’d play mostly cover songs?some by Bob Dylan, an artist he sounds a lot like ? but got sick of the repetition. “It got to a point where I had more of my own songs in my repertoire than I had cover songs that I wanted to play.”

Being signed also means he no longer has to busk on street corners, hoping to make enough money to buy food. Some days he’d make a few hundred dollars; other days he’d make $4.

When the offer to sign a record deal came along, there was little hesitation. He had just signed a publishing deal with Sony/ATV, and someone gave a copy of his album to Denise Donlon, then president of Sony Canada.

“I was on a bike tour on the sunshine coast with my wife and she flew us out (to Toronto) and we signed the deal,” he says.

He answered the call on his cell phone, but had this been 10 or 15 years ago, it would have been hard to track him down. “Not without smoke signals.”

He now tours on a bus, though admits it is sometimes awkward to be sitting for a long time without moving.

Fisher is touring across Canada opening for Sarah Slean and will soon play in Japan at a world fair.

Some dates with Slean are in front of 90 people, and he has also opened for Kalan Porter, the Canadian Idol winner, playing in front of over 1,000 people. He tries to adjust his set to cater to each audience.

“I usually think about things that I should adjust after I’ve already done them. When I’m singing songs about sex and smoking drugs in high school, and then look out into an audience of 11 year old girls, after the fact I think maybe I should have edited my show.”

Fisher opens for Slean tonight (Thursday) in Toronto and tomorrow in Hamilton. For more tour dates, visit jeremyfishermusic.com






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